Collective Memory and Justice Policy. Post-Socialist Discourses on Memory Politics and Memory Culture in Bulgaria
Collective Memory and Justice Policy. Post-Socialist Discourses on Memory Politics and Memory Culture in Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: A significant aspect of the post-socialist transformation in all Central and East European societies is the policy of justice. The implementation of transitional justice includes different measures: criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparation programs, memorialization efforts. The concepts of justice, restitution, compensation and identification of victims, de-collectivization, and reconciliation are debated in Bulgarian society after 1989 as closely related to memory – memory being turned into a key-organizing concept of those processes. The present article shall discuss the relation between discourses of justice and remembering in Bulgaria after 1989 focussing on one aspect of transitional justice – memory politics and the construction of collective identities of victims and heroes after 1989. It is based on an ethnographic study of two groups of victims of political regimes: forced labourers before and after September 9, 1944, and on a field research in the small town of Belene, the place where the largest Bulgarian communist labour camp was built. The conclusion is that the Bulgarian experience with establishing retributive justice was unsuccessful, uncertain, and inconsistent. As a result, the trust of citizens in the democratic institutions – court, parliament, political elite – was undermined. Another “Historikerstreit” is coming.

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